About
Every woman’s experience of motherhood is unique, we have all experienced it first hand by the simple fact that we have all been born. Sometimes it is through these formative experiences that our perceptions and persuasions around how we need to be as a woman are shaped—propelling us toward or repulsing us away from motherhood, sometimes it is an innate intuition to have children or not have children, sometimes it seems by accident or intervention.
However it is that the reality appears to land there are as many angles on the subject as there are people in the world.
Despite all angles, the assumption that “a woman is this…” and “a mother is that…” informs all facets of life including cultural, social, family, relationship or work. If thoroughly digested those outside narratives can become inside narratives where they become the thoughts that we think are our own. Later, through circumstance, these thoughts and desires aren’t always met with a reality and sometimes this can be experienced in disruptive or challenging ways. Yet it is often in these moments of apparent dissonance that we are able to see things in a way we weren’t able to before. What we once accepted as a ‘norm’ is no longer a ‘norm’ or a possibility, let alone a reality, and then life as we formerly thought we knew it unravels.
Mariette Reineke and Marian Lowe both experienced this when a desire and need to have children wasn’t met with the reality. What was assumed as a given, an evolutionary necessity, a life calling and purpose became a complicated, tenuous, effortful endeavour where life circumstances didn’t meet the expectation. Subsequently many veils were lifted on what they once thought was true. Little did they know that years later they would come together to share about their experiences and realise through each other that there are as many angles on this subject as there are people in the world.
Through this realisation and many others this website is inspired as a space to share through interviews and articles some of the many expressions on what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a mother so that the multi-dimensional richness that is Women & Motherhood may be as apparent as it really is.
W&M team
Mariette
Belgium / Holland
For a long time, I missed something. I went searching outside of myself, travelled the world, had different partners and even went to India to visit a guru. Nothing helped. Maybe a child would give me a sense of purpose and fulfillment? I did not have children, but in the past 12 years, I have deepened in relationship with myself. I re-connected with what I know is true, and having a child from a need is not it. I live with my husband and love being in the world, among and with people, knowing that I am complete, and have always been.
Marian
Canada
I used to think that having children would make me more valuable and would give me greatest purpose. Then, following an unraveling of unfulfilled ideals and expectations I woke up one day to realise that my worthiness is not dependant on anything I do or achieve, neither any title I am given or praise I am awarded. Value as a human being is essentially innate, it is always there and always will be, no matter what, without question. I have also learned over the last decade that letting go of ideals offers a freeing way to live.
Ingrid
New Zealand
I am a mother in this life, having given birth to three children, but I am also a mother of many more, for as a woman I have innately within me a mothering energy that always is available to everyone, not just my children. It has taken many years of my life to come to realise what, as a woman, I offer this world, whether I bring children into it through my body or not. Having children does not define me, but moving through the world as the wise, delicate and all loving woman I am, does.
Giselle
Australia
Being a woman and or a mother can come with a lot of pressures and ideals about how we are meant to be or how we should be. In my lifetime so far I have seen through some of these pressures and ideals and yet I always feel there is so much more to learn about the truth of my body as a woman, and the truth of my being, a beingness that came way before the title of woman or role of mother.
I too, like many other women that I have spoken to who have children, have experienced what it feels like to lose myself in the role and seeming duty of being a mother. I experienced this during the first few months of becoming a mum when I was 25 years old. It was horrible, I felt hidden and unseen, like I was walking through life behind a shadow that was not me. I felt robbed of the real me and ugly because of it. The ugliness I was feeling was the consciousness that comes with being a mother and the multitude of ideals it is laced with.
With the support of my husband and other people who know the true essence of me, I saw where I was grabbed by the role of mother and how it was taking me away from the inner richness of me.
I am still learning everyday that it is not about being a ‘good mum’ based on ideals that come from outside of us, nor is it a woman’s duty to have children. It is about our connection to ourselves within and it is the depth of this connection that parents both our own movements in life and our children. Our connection within is where the real inner richness is, a richness that is nurturing of all — for all — to receive and enjoy, including ourselves.